Food on the go 2.0

I already announced that another ‘Food on the go’ would appear on the blog soon, since I was on vacation again. It is the pretty cool thing about having finished school: you have time to go wherever you want. So I was in a couple of cities and towns again. Let me show you, what precious food I found there.

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First, I was in Berlin again and visited a vegan food market there. For refreshind, we tried the flavoured coconut milk with a cute design. The ‘Veganz’ shop was pretty expensive, you’d better buy normal stuff like fruit, vegetables and bread in a normal supermarket. But there is everything and more in a vegan version available. I had a chocolate coconut milk, which I liked, because it reminded me of Bounty.

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If you want some interesting and cheap food, you should walk around the area of the Adalbertstraße. There are many restaurants and bars offering food of foreign origin. I had an awesome falafel wrap at a Lebanese restaurant which offers a lot of Oriental vegetarian and vegan meals.

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The next day I was in Leipzig, where I found a neat place called “Bagel Brothers”. I am not that into bagels, but the hop offers homemade apple lemonade with fresh apple juice. Perfect on a hot day!

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Walk along Karli street for some good vegetarian and vegan food. You should try one of the kebab shops, they often have fancy menus with falafel, tofu and seitan fillings as a substitute for the traditional meat stuff. I had a wrap with cheese and spinach which made me very happy (you do realize I like wraps).

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I was also in France for several days where we visited Nice, Cannes, Monaco and Marseille. On our first day in Nice, we found a bakery providing traditional sweets of southern France, offering these buttery cookies and the traditional navettes, butter cookies with orange flavour. I personally liked the violet flavoured cookie above, but I am sure it tastes best as a part of a triffle or cheesecake, since it was a bit dry.

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The best food I had was at a small restaurant a few metres away from our hotel in Nice. ‘Chez Moi’ offers a delicious menu with three courses for 15 Euros. You have the choice between about 3 different meals per course. When we had dinner there, we only saw French people there, which means this place is not a tourist trap. I had a very interesting salad with roasted bread, fresh tomatos, peaches and fennel. The main course was a risotto with vegetables and pickled citrus – try this and you will know what heaven is like. As a dessert, I chose a slice of apricot tart and concluded that I have to learn more about french patisserie. Danm, they know how to cook!

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In Marseille, we proceeded with exploring French pastries. First thing, we ate our was through fruity macarons and then I fell in love with a citrus meringue tart.

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The markets in southern France offer a lot of good fruit and vegetables which are ripe and full of flavour. We went across a food market and had some figs, apricots, watermelon and honeydew.

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In Cannes, we tried some sugared churros. These are really fun to me, because I love finger food and food that can be dipped into different sauces. Maybe I should give these another try (The last time I fried churros, one of them exploded and my whole kitchen was messed up).

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In Le Souk, a restaurant at the Old Harbor in Marseille, you can try very good Moroccan food. We ordered couscous and got a big pot with a kind of spiced vegetable soup, chickpeas, raisins with chinnamon, chicken with curcuma and chili paste. It is a lot of fun to sit together with friends and combine the different components.

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And last but not least: our food at Lafayette Gourmet. We tried Belgian chocolate and caramel soft ice cream in the mall. I had a salad with parmesan and a vinaigrette dressind in a cute little glass bottle.
One highlight was the creamy mousse au chocolat. I really need to make this at home or look for a Lafayette Gourmet in Berlin, so I can buy some fresh mousse as a dessert.

Hope this post gave you some inspiration!

Tiny Berry Chocolates

I am heading off to France today, but I want to leave you a special treat on the blog.

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These cute heart-shaped chocolates are filled with a refreshing berry cream. They will be melting on your tongue!

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I know this is not the easiest recipe and it takes quite some time to make, but you will recieve quite few chocolates when ready (about 60). And when you have a bite, you will know that it was worth the stress.

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You had better put these babies in the refridgerator to keep the chocolate chunky or, if you want to the consistency of the filling to be similar to ice cream, in the freezer. During summer, I prefer the second option.

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Tiny Berry Chocolates:

60 semi-sweet chocolate hollow spheres

250 g (8 oz.) mixed berries, frozen
200 g (7 oz.) white chocolate
50 ml (1/8 cup) heavy cream
30 g (1 oz.) butter

300 g chocolate for coating

Put the frozen berries in a small saucepan and heat them until they start to boil. Let the fruit simmer for about 30 minutes.

Blend the berries until there are no big pieces of fruit in the mass. You can run them through a sieve to remove the seeds.

Break the chocolate down into pieces and put it in the still hot berry mixture, as well as the butter and heavy cream. The berries are usually still hot enough to melt all of the ingredients, so you just have to stir until everything is smooth. But if the berries have become colder, you might heat the mass up a little.

Let the filling cool for a while at room temperature, then place for at least 1 hour in the freezer, so it becomes easier to fill it in the hollow spheres. It should be quite thick when you take it out.

Fill the cream in a piping bag with a rather small tip, fitting into the hole of your hollow spheres. Fill the chocolate spheres up to the rim of the hole.

Chop the chocolate and melt it in your microwave, not heating for more than 30 seconds at a time, or using the water bath method. Dip the filled spheres in the chocolate until they are completely coated. I find it easier to use 2 small forks for that part.

Let them cool on a sheet of baking parchment. And don’t forget to enjoy!

Food on the go

Ahoy y’all, another eternity since my last post has passed, I know, I know.
But I am not dead or something. Just had a tough time getting through my finals and guess what? I survived.
Yeah, I was quite busy but now I kind of have my life back – or should I rather say: ‘my life has just started’?
So, to get down a little between the exams, I travelled around quite a bit. Just a little. Okay, I pretty much ate my way through the heart of Europe.

First stop: Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a really beautiful town near the German-French border. You can see a lot of the French and Italian influence – gelato, chocolaterie, épicerie… yes, it is a really romantic and very yummy place to be!

This spice shop is a really fancy little place you find quite hidden in the main shopping street if you go through one of the passages. If there is a place in Germany where you can get every kind of pepper in the world – this is it. There was a really great variety of oils, spices and salt there.

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They even had grilled grasshoppers there! Argh!

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I did some turbo sightseeing that day since I was on my own and undisturbed, so there was also plenty of time to chill out in cafés. I sat down in the neat chocolaterie YilliY in a tiny street near the main tourist track (it was not that crowded, mind you), where you can enjoy the best hot chocolate and listen to live piano music. The paintings are worth a look, too.

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To cool down, you should not miss trying a homemade ice tea from The Fresh Tea Shop or some freshly squeezed juice at a Chiquita stall.

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Second stop: Berlin. Well, I was not in Berlin to report what I am eating, so not on the hunt for fancy food, either. But if you come near Wonder Waffle or the sweet crêperie which says ‘Eat Crêpes, No Crap’, make sure you don’t miss these mouthwatering sweets.

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I was on a tour through Italy. Yeah, I was, no kidding. (Milan – Sirmione – Verona – Venice) So besides the typical ‘pizza and pasta’, which is of course fantastic, we had some fancier stuff, as well.

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Pizza ROLL, anyone?

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Or some rick dark choc muffin, or a zabaione mountain tart?

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Or crispy cannoli with the creamiest cream?

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Hang on, I have one more for you:

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Perfect ice cream! It is atually so popular that you have to take a number to order it.

And the last one (for now) is Prague. My most recent trip gave me the opportunity to experience the delight of eating trdelnik, a thin sugared roll of dough – you can’t miss it, its delicious aroma is carried down all the streets!

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And finally, some more ice cream – Absinth is a Czech specialty and there are plenty Absinth-flavoured things to buy. Go for the ice cream, it is sweet and creamy. I do not even know if there was actually alcohol inside – but if there was, it must have been quite little.

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So that’s it for now. But I shall post more often from now on. I have a neat truffle recipe waiting for you and I will travel some more in less than a fortnight – Berlin, Leipzig and several cities at the Côte d’Azur are waiting to be visited!